Life Imitates Art
by tiffaroolou
Summary: "This reminds me of a movie..." Just how many bizarrely accurate cinematic scenarios does the team get themselves into? A lot apparently. Rated for potential language and violence and plenty of whumped!Tony. I just can't help myself. ch 2- Tortured Tony
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Hey guys, I'm back. Kind of. I'm trying to work through what I need to get done on my WIPs, but with school and work plus a brand new adorable niece that I just can't stay away from, I'm having trouble finding the time and brainpower to follow my plots through to their logical conclusions. I'm working on it though and don't worry, I will definitely finish each and every one of them. Trust me, I hate abandoned fics just as much, if not more so than the next girl. In the meantime, here is a piece I originally wrote about 8 months ago with the idea to turn it into a series of one-shots. The idea is still there and several chapters are half-written, and I've found that looking at it with a fresh perspective is helping tons. Hope you like. :D

**Chapter 1: On Top of Things**

* * *

Tony sighed and tipped his head to the side. The cold cement of the basement wall was surprisingly soothing against the goose egg of a lump he was now sporting on his left temple.

With the angle his arms were at, chained high above his head as he stood, he couldn't see his watch well enough to tell the time, no matter how he twisted. He wasn't sure he'd have been able to read the face anyway though, his concussion-blurred vision further worsened by the blood dripping into his eyes from a gash across his forehead.

Either way, it frustrated him to no end that he had no way of telling how long he'd been here, wherever here was.

Well, however much time had passed, it was long enough.

He could only hope that someone had gotten the message he'd managed to send before being captured. If not, then 'long enough' was looking to turn into 'the rest of his miserable life', as his captors had put it.

One bad thing—of which there were many—about Gibbs' recent retirement to Mexico was that the team was now oddly numbered. They were supposed to be assigned a new agent in the next few weeks, but for now they'd had to either all go together out in the field or split off unevenly. And since there was no way that Tony, as team leader, was going to allow _his_ agents, either of them, to go into a dangerous situation without backup, he was the one who ended up going off solo when it was necessary.

Which was how he had landed himself in this predicament.

Basically.

He sighed again, shifting his position to try to lessen the growing throb in his shoulders from the unnatural position they were being forced into, and wiggling his fingers as best he could to try to get feeling back in his hands.

These guys, whoever they were, were seriously predictable. Typical for hired muscle, they were about as subtle as bulldozers and not quite as gentle. Of course, his trademark smart-ass attitude hadn't helped matters, but even before he opened his mouth he'd gotten the sense that they were in the mood to use him as a punching bag.

As soon as he got out of here, he was going to soak in a long hot bath, Tony decided. He closed his eyes, imagining the steaming water soothing his bruised and abused body.

Suddenly the door to his makeshift prison creaked open, interrupting his thoughts, and McGee and Ziva stumbled in. Cheered for a brief second, Tony's face quickly fell when he realized that their hands were tied in front of them as they were prodded from behind by several large men holding semiautomatics.

_Great._

Despite this turn of events, however, Tony couldn't resist an opportunity for backtalk.

"You know guys," he amiably addressed the goons, "as much fun as this little get-together looks like it's going to be, my friends and I actually have someplace to be."

"Shut up!" one of them barked, backhanding Tony across the face.

He barely suppressed a gasp as he felt his bottom lip split open anew, but still managed a sunny grin as he spit his mouthful of blood onto the ground.

"Now, now. That wasn't very hospitable. I'll be speaking to the management about this, I assure you."

Not bothering to respond this time, the men simply continued chaining up his teammates on either side of him.

"Well, I guess we'll just 'hang around' then," Tony called out, his words punctuated with the slam of the door as they were left alone.

He turned to look at his team. The other two agents seemed not much the worse for wear; evidently, the goons had thoroughly worked through their anger issues on Tony's face.

Breaking the silence, Tony spoke up, unable to help the slight slur that his words had taken on.

"So… I guess you got my message?"

"I passed the pertinent information on to the director," McGee said, looking a bit green as he took in the state of the team lead. "Just like you said to, Tony."

Ziva's eyes darted quickly all over Tony, taking note of his injuries. "Then we decided to come and rescue you."

At this, Tony leaned his head back and laughed, laughing and laughing as Ziva and McGee exchanged worried glances.

Finally he stopped.

Mostly.

Shaking his head in amusement as he continued to chuckle, Tony glanced up toward his restrained hands.

"Good job."

McGee opened his mouth to protest, but Tony wasn't finished.

"You know what this reminds me of?"

Ziva sighed wearily. "A movie, Tony; what else?"

"Correct you are, Zee-vah," Tony practically sang. "But which movie?"

"I do not _know_, Tony," she snapped. "And I do not care, either."

Tony ignored her, still grinning.

"It's just like this one scene in Star Wars."

"Hey, wait. You mean in Episode II?" McGee asked, suddenly interested. "Attack of the Clones?"

Tony cocked his head to the side to stare at him, surprised. "You saw that, Probie?"

"Well, yeah."

Tony shook his head knowingly. "Of course you did, McSciFi. For a moment I forgot with whom I was McSpeaking. So then, you _must_ know what happens next, right?"

McGee frowned, puzzled, before realization dawned. "Senator Amidala picks her handcuffs and gets free?"

"Exactly!"

Both men now turned to Ziva, excited.

She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

"So, just because you two saw this in some movie, you expect me to be able to emulate this... Senator Amidala, yes? To save the day?"

"Well, in the film, Amidala didn't exactly save the day. Not by herself, at least," McGee corrected. "Actually, I'm not sure you could really even say that the day was saved, per say- _Ouch_!"

"Be quiet, Probie-Wan Kenobi," Tony puffed, winded from the effort it had taken to reach out and kick McGee in the shin. "She's our only hope."

They turned back to Ziva, with an air of optimism. She glared.

"Alright, fine. I will do it. But not because of any movie. It just happens that this was my plan to begin with."

With what seemed like one swift turn of her hands, Ziva's chains slipped off her wrists and crashed to the ground.

Tony and McGee exchanged a grin. "Looks like she's on top of things!" they chorused together.

The twin slaps that found the back of each man's head were not entirely unexpected after that.

* * *

Feedback, as always, is appreciated and rewarded with good karma points.

-Tiff


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I once had a dream that I owned NCIS. But then there was this unicorn who came and said "You can't have NCIS, no way. I want it!" And it was a unicorn so what could I do? I had to give it to him. All the same, I woke up crying.  
P.S.- This is completely fabricated.

**A/N: **Hello my lovlies! I am quite proud of this chapter, even though it did cause me to have to change one story category from Humor to General. Some chapters will have humor while others like this one won't, but they will all have some amount of H/C or whump, so I kept that one. Just FYI, this chapter is meant to take place in mid-season 3.  
On another note, I have created a facebook page for my fanfiction, so for those of you who don't have an FFN account and would like to know whenever I update, just search for Tiffaroolou under pages. Much like Tigger, I'm the only one. :D This page is not solely for the RSS feed of my updates; I will also be posting other things there to do with fanfiction, the stories and ideas I'm working on, information about actors and fandoms I follow, etc, so everyone should check it out!

**Chapter 2: (You Will _Not_) Die Another Day**

* * *

Most people don't have a list of torture techniques in the order they'd prefer them to be used on their person in the event of a 'James Bond gets captured in North Korea'-esque scenario.

Tony did.

He was an expert by now.

This was quickly moving to the bottom of his list.

Not being able to breathe was terrible. It reminded him far too much of his time at Bethesda with the plague, gasping for air as he suffocated in his own lungs.

The first time they'd done this, it had awakened an absolutely primal, instinctive reaction of fear in Tony. He'd struggled and fought to get away from the strong hands that held his head below the water, causing him to run out of air much more quickly than if he'd stayed still, and he'd inhaled the shockingly cold water and nearly drowned. Since then he'd learned that the sooner he went limp and compliant, the sooner they would pull him out and question him.

He still put up a token struggle each time, though. It was expected, and anyhow it was so instinctive he didn't think he could have completely quelled it if he tried. Besides, he didn't exactly want anyone to figure out which method of questioning he disliked most, lest it immediately become their favorite. He could take almost any form of interrogation more easily than this. As long as he was able to draw in air to fuel his sarcastic jokes and quips, he considered the world more right than wrong. Air was the deciding factor.

Air is an odd thing. It can't be seen, can't be smelled, can't be heard, tasted, or touched. It has no mass or substance really. It's just, well, air.

So why did it have to be so important?

Tony didn't know.

All he knew at the moment was that he desperately wanted to take a breath, and couldn't.

Water was the only thing his lungs would fill with right now if he tried.

At this point he'd gone still nearly a minute ago, Tony judged, keeping track by a count in his head. Just when he thought his lungs might explode if he held his breath any longer, he was suddenly yanked up by the hair and pulled above the surface of the old-fashioned bathtub that served as a makeshift drowning chamber for his captors.

As he gasped for air, weakly shaking his dripping head about in an attempt to look around, he was roughly shoved to his knees beneath a glaringly bright light, his arms pinioned painfully behind him.

"So, Agent DiNozzo, is it?" a cold, accented voice spoke out of the shadows in front of him. Tony squinted under the harsh light, unable to see beyond it to the source of the voice. "I've come to find out whether you have seen reason yet."

"Hmmm." Tony pretended to think for a second before flashing his best shit-eating grin. "Nope. 'Fraid not. But if I do see him, I'll tell him you're looking for him."

A fist came out of nowhere, striking him in the mouth. Ater working his jaw, Tony's expression settled into a slight smirk. That line was totally worth it.

"I had hoped you had learned something from your time here. Apparently we will have to work harder to teach you."

Tony's grin widened. "Well, I've always been a little hard-headed." _Which actually comes in pretty useful with Gibbs, _he added silently.

"You _will_ tell me what I want to know," the voice commanded. "You will tell me how much the American government knows of my operation. You will tell me the name of all spies they have planted within my organization. And if you tell me sooner rather than later, I assure you that your death will be swift and... relatively painless."

Tony chuckled, a dark, breathless sound. "Oh, _really_? Even if that were a tempting offer, you'll excuse me if I don't believe a word you say."

"You insult me," the voice sniffed imperiously.

_Good._

"We are not inhumane in our treatment of prisoners."

"Well, now," Tony drawled, allowing his sarcasm to drip through every word, "isn't that comforting." He could almost see the shrug as the voice changed tactics.

"It does no good for you to be silent, you know. NCIS has abandoned you. Your team, your _friends_," here the voice paused to laugh scornfully, "will not be coming for you."

Tony did his best to ignore the voice, instead concentrating on his ragged breathing as he stared straight ahead.

Of course the team would come for him.

They would.

... If they could.

"Come now." The voice was now circling Tony predatorily. It took all of his willpower to remain staring ahead and not flinch. "This will all be over much more quickly if you only cooperate."

"Yeah?" Tony mustered up all the energy in his body and spit toward the voice. "Go to hell," he growled, before being dragged out of the light and beaten until he lost consciousness.

After that, torture merged into torture, day into day. He was burned with hot pokers, locked in a room with hundreds of stinging scorpions, deprived of food and sleep for days at a time, whipped until his back was covered in blood and his throat was raw from screaming, and soon, Tony was left with no concept of how much time had passed since he'd been captured.

He wasn't even sure what these people wanted from him anymore, but he knew one thing for damn sure- whatever it was, he wouldn't give it up, no matter what they did to him. There were only two ways out of this now; Gibbs would come, or Tony would die.

It was simple, really.

He sat in the corner of his cell contemplating this one day, and when two men came in and dragged him out, he didn't put up a fight. He was resigned to his fate.

Que sera, sera: what will be, will be.

Tony maintained this attitude and his silence through several sessions of none-to-gentle questioning until at last he was brought to the room with the bathtub again. He began to panic a little. As much as he felt it was time for something, anything, to happen here, this was _not_ the way he wanted to go.

Kicking and struggling with all his might, he was nevertheless forced into position, and two pairs of hands plunged his head beneath the water and held it there.

They weren't going to let him up this time, he realized after his count reached 200. Not soon enough. He needed _air, _dammit! He _had_ to get loose! He thrashed frantically and fought with the hands holding him down. He couldn't take this much longer. He was going to have to inhale soon, air or no air.

The lack of oxygen was getting to him and his vision was beginning to grey. No, no, _no_! Now was _not_ a good time to test his insistance that DiNozzos don't pass out!

Finally, the pressure became unbearable and Tony unwillingly sucked in a lungful of frigid water. He coughed and choked underwater as his lungs and throat and nose burned, frantically scrabbling for some sort of handhold to push himself up and away from the dreaded thing, but it was no use. His struggles grew weaker and weaker and he could feel himself getting further and further away...

* * *

"Clear," Ziva called quietly, exiting the last room on the right of the long hallway.

"Clear, Boss," McGee added, closing the rickety door to Gibbs' left.

Nodding once in acknowledgement, the team leader signaled silently for the two agents to follow him down a small set of stairs.

Tony had been kidnapped from his car in an alley outside DC nearly four weeks earlier, and they'd had almost no luck in tracking the people who took him until a few days ago. That was when they'd linked a cold case involving diamond smuggling that Tony had been studying with the disappearance of two Marines in South Africa.

Tony, the team thought, must have discovered the connection between a friend of the two men (a Petty Officer he had been assigned to shadow) and the son of the corrupt diamond baron. Somehow or another in the process of this, he had been seen or made, and had been taken before he got a chance to tell the team of his discovery.

The last month had been hell on the team as they tried to find leads to where Tony could be, wondering if he was even still alive, although Gibbs felt in his gut that he would know if his senior field agent was dead.

As Gibbs quietly eased open the door leading to the basement and the team walked in, he could hear a cold female voice coming faintly from behind another closed door, further in.

"—and I don't care much if you _have_ killed him. The boss said we could do what we like now. He's given up the idea of getting information from this one."

Tim and Ziva looked anxiously toward Gibbs at this, who swallowed his own sense of dread and threw open the door.

When the three burst into the room and Gibbs saw what was being done to his agent, pure instinct took over. His reactions conditioned from years in the Marine Corps and NCIS, he barely took a second to assess the situation before shooting to kill. There were three people in the room besides Tony: two men, each holding him up by an arm, and a woman standing in the corner, coolly watching. All three raised weapons as Team Gibbs charged in; all three were down within seconds.

Gibbs was at Tony's side in a flash, pulling his SFA out of the water where he had fallen when the two men had dropped him, and laying him on the ground as Ziva and McGee secured the scene.

Tony's lips and nose had turned a frightening shade of blue, standing out starkly against the pallor of his skin. This was made all the more frightening by the fact that it reminded Gibbs of his agent not too long ago as he'd struggled for each breath under eerie blue lights. Now though, Gibbs realized that Tony was not struggling to breathe. He was not breathing at all, in fact.

As he checked for a pulse, Gibbs noticed that the drenched agent's skin was icy to the touch and remembered something he'd heard once- "A drowning victim isn't dead until he's warm and dead."

"Come on, DiNozzo," Gibbs muttered, giving Tony two rescue breaths as he continued to search for a pulse. "You will _not_ die today. You don't have my permission. Besides, I told Abby when we left that we were gonna bring you back. Don't you make a liar out of me!"

His fingers tightened around his agent's wrist as he finally located the errant pulse.

"Tony? Come on, DiNozzo, breathe. That's an order!"

Tony began to cough and retch, spewing out more water than seemed possible as he steadily emptied his lungs of the stuff. When at last he seemed finished, he drew several shuddery, choking breaths and opened his eyes slowly.

"Boss?" came the raspy whisper.

"Yeah, Tony?"

"'m I... dead?"

"Why would you say that?"

"Well, last time I checked... I was drowning." Tony started coughing again and Gibbs helped him sit up partially and lean against the wall. "Also," he began after catching his breath, "you're kind of holding my hand, Boss... It's a little weird."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow, then reached around with his other hand to gently smack Tony on the back of the head.

Tony chuckled nervously. "Did I say weird? What I meant to say was a little on the unusual side, but in a completely non-weird... absolutely non-creepy way."

"Uh-huh." As Tony lapsed into another uncontrollable coughing fit, Gibbs turned to McGee who was hovering nearby. "What's the ETA on that ambulance, Tim?"

"Should be here in five to ten, Boss," McGee reported. "Er, of course, depending on traffic it could be more or less than that. Although according to my—"

"That's fine, McGee," Gibbs interrupted before turning back to Tony, who had begun to shiver. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around the younger agent's shoulders. "You doing ok, Tony?"

"Just f-fine, B-boss," Tony chattered.

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "We'll see what Brad has to say about that."

"Bethesda?" At Gibbs' nod of confirmation, Tony unexpectedly grinned. "G-good."

"Good?" Gibbs pronounced the word slowly and carefully as if it were foreign. Which it practically was if you thought about it in the same context as Tony and hospitals.

"Yep. I have the p-perfect line for the situation. It f-fits and everything." Tony cleared his throat before stating in a grandly accented voice, "'My usual suite, please.'"

Gibbs just stared at him blankly.

"C-come on, Boss," Tony protested. "Die Another D-day? Don't t-tell me you haven't seen that."

Gibbs shrugged. "All right. I won't."

"That's s-sacrilege, G-gibbs." Tony shook his head weakly. "Absolute sacrilege," he muttered.

"Uh-huh."

"It's 007," Tony said simply, as if that explained it all. "James Bond. See, he's j-just escaped from a ship outside of Hong Kong, after being held p-prisoner in North Korea for fourteen months. So he w-walks into this s-swanky hotel, soaking w-wet, with his hair all 'Castaway' style, and he—"

Then again, knowing Tony, it probably did.


End file.
